There remains a significant gap between what the public expects and what the criminal justice system is delivering, the chief executive of the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) says today.
There remains a significant gap between what the public expects and what the criminal justice system is delivering, the chief executive of the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) says today.
In an exclusive interview with Whitehall & Westminster World, Ursula Brennan says she is focused on making criminal justice more like "slicker" public services overseen by other government departments.
Although OCJR has delivered justice to more offenders, and improvements in services for victims and witnesses, "There remains a huge gap between what the public expects and what we are delivering," she says. "So I see my task as really focusing on making it closer to the slicker, more efficient public services that we see in other places."
The OCJR, which was set up two years ago, is located in the headquarters of the Home Office but is a cross-departmental team that aims to support all criminal justice agencies such as the police, the courts and the prison service.
Brennan, who began work on the same day as John Reid became home secretary ("it has been quite an interesting induction to say the least"), says there is a lot of work to do. "The best public services and the best public servants are thinking about their customers and are reshaping their service to do so. The criminal justice system doesn’t feel like that... The need to bring some public service customer-focused messages into the criminal justice system while at the same time keeping a real focus on reducing crime and re-offending, is a major challenge."
Brennan also concedes that criminal justice in Britain is a "fantastically complex" system. "You’ve got the police, the prosecutors, the court service, prisons and probation – all of them working under different legislative bases, with a different ethos for the way they operate," she adds.
And asked about diversity in the civil service, Brennan says that although progress has been made since she started work in Whitehall in the 1970s, there remains an "enormous amount" to do in getting more women into the top ranks.
"There have been changes – there was a period when you could write down the standard career path for a permanent secretary, but the latest batch have different backgrounds. But the fact that so few of them are women is depressing, and it’s depressing for younger women who think that they won’t be able to make it to the very top."
Author: Matt Mercer
Last updated 2075 days ago by Civil Service World
